


Ebost Issala

by animasevera



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Socially Awkward Adaar, Suicidal Thoughts, Tal-Vashoth Iron Bull
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 23:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13398867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animasevera/pseuds/animasevera
Summary: A week after being rejected by the Qun, Bull faces his past and contemplates his future. Asaaranda Adaar tries to provide what support she can, all while struggling with the pressures of her job.





	Ebost Issala

(A/N: "Ebost Issala" means "To Dust.")

He was Qunari just a few days ago.  
  
Hours ago, they cast him off officially. Two agents had slipped into the Inquisition's ranks, aiming to strike him down with the deadliest poison in their arsenal. Even now, the Saar-qamek left an acrid sting in his nerves as he gazed down from the watchtower at the broken battlement wall some distance away. It was the same spot he had met with Asaaranda, in case he needed aid when they attacked. As far as he knew, their bodies still lay in the snow outside Skyhold's perimeter.  
  
These men were not strangers to Iron Bull - or, at least, not to Hissrad. In his younger days, they were the ones who would pass information back along the chain from him to the Ariqun. Apparently, they had been promoted to the rank of Tallis - assassins sent to hunt down enemies of the Qun, be they Tevinter spies, fanatical Chantry priests--  
  
or _Tal-vashoth._  
  
Their arrival ultimately brought with it the most painful reality: He was lost to the Qun forever. Even if he changed his mind and tried to return, the Ariqun would have him slain the instant he set foot in Qunandar. It left an empty, aching hole in his chest larger and deeper than any wound he had ever received to the body. Even the Saar-qamek by now seemed dull by comparison, and this poison had no antidote in sight. It took all his willpower to keep from screaming, from sobbing, from pounding his fists against the hewn stone until they bled. A wayward thought coursed through his mind, that he could simply throw himself from this watchtower.  
  
This thought made him snarl as his nails grazed his palms, scraping away a layer of skin. The last time he thought of such things, it was back in Seheron. All he could remember were the faces of dead children, poisoned. His own men, taken down by the same poison. Vasaad, dying in his arms, a strong young man reduced to tears by the pain, croaking out the name "Ashkaari" through his gagging death rattle. When his awareness came back to him, the ground was littered with the mutilated bodies of the deserters he had come to hunt, and he was sticky with their blood and his. Worse, he was alone. Alone with the realization that the revenge he had sought had nearly turned him into those he had hunted. His blurry eyes caught sight of a Tal-Vashoth's dagger, coated in that deadly brew. The wretched thing practically called out to him, inviting him to bury it in his neck so it would at least _look_ like he died fighting them. It would certainly be better than slipping so deep into madness he couldn't be saved.  
  
But he knew who could save him. They came, just in time - those of his men who made it out alive, and more. He dropped his axe, fell to his knees, and pleaded to be taken to the Tamassrans. He even asked for the chains, in case he should lose control again.  
  
His memories of his time spent in the reeducation center were mostly a jagged, painful fog. He did submit voluntarily, but it was still so harrowing that he felt his mind lock up at the idea of opening that vault. Such things were better left out of mind, back in Qunandar where they belonged.  
  
As he thought once more of home, his mind now drifted to those who were sent to kill him. There was no way he was just another kill to them - he was too infamous among the Ben-Hassrath for his cleverness, his tenacity, and of course, his size. Even just watching their methods of attack, he could see flashes of hesitation in their stances. One of them muttered "Anaan esaam Qun" before ambushing him from behind. The other tried to strike quickly, to end the affair before it could begin. Unfortunately for the both of them, he had dragon blood in his veins and had dosed himself with the antidote before in anticipation of their arrival. They were dead before the poison even had time to start working.       
  
Speaking of time, they showed up fast - _too_ fast to have come straight from Qunandar. His gut and brain coiled into yet more knots around this particular nut. The only conclusion in view was that the assassins had accompanied Gatt and his crew from the start. Not exactly surprising - it was standard protocol to have them on hand to deal with deserters, defectors, spies, and other threats to the Qun's demands. Yet, something in his chest grew fitfully cold in a way it had never done before. One question bubbled up above all the others:  
  
Did they know it would happen?  
  
Not that this possibility surprised him, either; he'd already been slipping for some time. Drinking until he could barely see straight, sex with anyone for no purpose other than pleasure, eating until he was beyond full, and - worst of all - becoming attached to his men. Before now, he at least had the Qun to come back to for guidance and certainty. There would be a time when it would all be over, and he could go home to the world he knew. Even Gatt had acknowledged that. Yet, Bull found himself curiously absent of the need to rush until his hand was forced.  
  
They had given him an ultimatum: Fulfill his role and betray the trust of his most loyal comrades, or choose these bas and have the blood of his brethren on his hands. Either way, he would be damned. Even so, the decision wasn't even his to make. Inquisitor Adaar was his superior, and the fate of the Bull and his Chargers rested in her hands. His own might as well have been sealed the instant Asaaranda and Gatt exchanged words. Their behavior remained civil and words cordial, but he recognized the venom in Gatt's gaze and the cold fire in Asa's as they pointedly avoided coming into one another's weapon reach. At first, he was prepared to get between them if violence broke out.  
  
"Sound the retreat."  
  
She issued the command without hesitation, doubt or ambiguity. It came like a hammer's blow to his insides, which then seemed to collapse like a statue whose pedestal had been shaken to pieces. The ferocity of her attacks and the nature of her magic were what inspired her name, but even with three firmly-spoken words, she called up thunder. The lightning struck in Gatt's bitter glare as Bull obeyed Asa's command, blowing a single note of retreat on his commanding horn.  
  
But there was no shelter for the man once called Hissrad to take. For "Hissrad," it was a mortal blow, leaving only The Iron Bull standing on the southern beach of the Waking Sea, shielding his face from the explosions of the doomed dreadnought. Almost immediately, he turned his back to the devastation, lest he see the water turn red. Even on the way back to camp, he never once looked back, and barely spoke any words beyond absolute need.  
  
He had predicted Asa's decision long before even receiving his final missive. He had become aware of the event itself through piecing together information from successive reports, each one leaving a knot in his gut as the facts became clearer. Old spectres came closer, silenced voices grew louder, all of it ending in one Vashoth mage refusing an alliance with his people. By what he had read in the reports, the horns in charge up north had their own reservations about her. However, they both knew better than to rule out the unlikely; Bull himself witnessed her virtually rising out of the snow after having been thought lost in a direct attack by Corypheus.  
  
Perhaps it was all a test. Faith and hope were all but meaningless under the Qun; it demanded tests and evidence, and objectivity in truth. As to what was being tested, he could only guess. From what he did know, Asaaranda's competence as a leader would have been of high concern - she would have had to be able to make the most difficult decisions. His loyalty might have also been called into question at some point, and that answer would have just been an added bonus.  
  
If that was the case, by the Triumvirate's metric, they had both failed.  
  
As he neared the eastern tower, two familiar figures emerged from Cullen's office. The patch of curly golden locks and gleaming armored boots marked Cullen, and the long slate grey coat and horns indicated Asaaranda. He could barely make out what they were saying, aside from a few nasal exclamations from Asa about red lyrium. They exchanged parting gestures, and she turned away to walk along the wall.  
  
The same wall that would lead her right in Bull's direction.  
  
As wary as he was about magic, he could trade his own damned head for an invisibility spell right about now. As much as he respected her, he had little patience for her usual prodding at the moment. Best he could do was play dumb and pretend such heavy things weren't on his mind. Perhaps, he hoped, she'd miss his cues and start rambling about something completely unrelated.    
  
"Hey, Bull!"  
  
Perhaps not.  
  
It wasn't _that_ hard to spot him from where she was standing, what with the huge horns and blue striped trousers. The Inquisitor, now free of the moment's duties, closed the distance between them until she didn't have to shout to be heard. "What are you doing all the way out here?"  
  
A flick up of his eyebrows, a calculated gasp, and a wide-eyed glance in her direction were convincing enough signs of surprise. "Oh, hey, Boss. I was just..." His gaze broke off to the mountains in the distance. "...Just getting some air." He turned his back to her and cast his eye far to the icy peaks. "View's not bad, either."  
  
Asa's focus followed his, but stopped at Bull himself. It was times like this that she wished she had a Ben-Hassrath's perception, if only to read him beyond the vague feeling of something being off. Still, it would not have been right to try to work an answer out of him, nor would it have been successful; he was trained from youth to keep and extract secrets, and could deflect and outlast almost anything she could throw at him. He would not divulge anything, it seemed, until he was ready. For his sake, she was content to wait.  
  
She took a few more steps over to join him, letting her gaze wander further and further down until her mind began to wonder about the stability of the wall, praying to whoever was listening that it would not cave in with her standing on it. "Hey," she breathed out in a chilly cloud of air, "I was walking around the battlements and checking out how stuff's running. Wanna join me?"  
  
His initial answer was silent relief that she didn't immediately start asking questions. A walk sounded simple and placid, without judgment or ulterior motive or demand. Perhaps, it would be enough to clear his thoughts for a while. Besides, her company was on the whole better than the total solitude in which his metaphorical inner demons were the most restless. "Mmm," he mused, "Yeah, I could do that. Beats standing around here, anyway."  
  
"I'll say," said Asa, turning back to walk the other way around the battlements. "C'mon, we'll head back toward the tavern." She tilted her head in the direction of the visible sign for the Herald's Rest. "It's the long way around. Plenty of time to clear our heads and maybe get some shit off our chests while we're at it."  
  
Despite his braced leg, he wasn't that far behind, lumbering along after her with his weight strategically placed to match her pace. He carefully noted her wording - a subtle nudge for him to open up, but left open-ended so he could decide. Though he had no intention of telling her what was on his mind at the moment, he silently appreciated her consideration. On the brighter side, there'd be drinks at the end of it; he wouldn't be caught dead complaining about that. Now that the option had been brought up, his palate did feel unseasonably parched. "Good idea. Did you want to go first?" It sounded like an offer, but was intended to direct her attention away from his turmoil.  
  
"Nothing you haven't heard before," Asa confessed, tucking her hands into the pockets she insisted on having crafted into her trousers. "Cullen won't back down on his issues with mages." She shot another look at the commander's tower. "It's literally the same conversation, over and over again. He talks about how mages are dangerous and can't be trusted, I have to remind him we're people, he keeps hammering the nail about how we can be possessed, I have to remind him I've been to the fucking Fade in the flesh and came back in one piece--"  
  
" _Boss._ " Bull nearly growled out the word, his teeth clenched in unease and his gait slowing by a margin. "You're not helping." Magic was the last thing he needed to hear about.  
  
The bluntness of his words hit her like the war hammer he carried, and any of her own she had left fell to pieces from the blow. Her gaze dropped to trace the hewn lines where the grey bricks met beneath her feet. "I-I'm...I'm..." Her tongue skipped on the words like an apprentice scribe's shaky quill in need of ink. Fists curled to clenching in frustration at her own mouth's inability to produce the necessary sounds. The only sound she was able to produce was a loud groan of defeat as she threw her hands down at her sides. She didn't lift her eyes.  
  
"You don't have to say--"  
  
"I'M SORRY, BULL." Asa was so determined to get the words out that she neglected to control her volume. Only after she had gotten her breath back did she realize her tone might have come off as aggressive, something neither of them needed in this tense moment.  
  
Bull, however, was paying far more attention to her body language - the lowered gaze, the sudden silence, the clenching fists. She was looking for everything but a fight. "Hey, forget about it. We're trying to get shit off our chests, right? Just...be more careful with the magic talk, yeah?"  
  
"Y-yeah," Asa repeated, but said nothing else. Almost everything on her mind right now had something or other to do with magic. Now it sat between her horns with nowhere to go except buzzing from their tips.  
  
When she turned away, Bull rumbled and shook his head, partially out of sympathy, partially exasperation.  
  
Both of their heads popped up at the sound of clanking armor approaching them from nearby. Asa cringed at the sound of a whistle from the same direction.  
  
Bull, however, knew who it was without even looking. "It's just Krem," he pointed out under his breath, "That's how he gets my attention when he thinks I'm not giving him enough."  
  
"Chief!" A husky, spirited and breathless Tevene voice called out as its owner strode up to them with a visible spring in his step. "Been lookin' all over Fade and creation for you." He swept one leather-clad hand back over his tight military haircut, wiping the sweat away from his brow.  
  
Cremisius always had a way of pulling the captain away from the deeper troubles in his head. As painful as his loss of connection with home was, he wasn't sure if he could ever face the possibility of watching his lieutenant die in his name. Showing that pain, however, was absolutely not an option. This called for his usual acting talent. First, a convincing grin - he had to make sure to include his eye. "What's goin' on?" he asked, with a rehearsed snort. "Need someone to wipe your nose?"  
  
"Nah, I'm alright," Krem countered, shaking his head with a sincere smile. "Better than I've been in a while, really." Something in his eyes, though, darkened his expression. "There was a moment back there at the Coast," His voice softened to cracking between syllables as he recalled what he thought would be the Chargers' last stand. "I thought that'd be it for us, that you wouldn't call us back. Had my life flashing before my eyes and everything." He briefly glanced out from the battlements, but avoided looking down. "But then I heard that horn, and..." A surge of emotions welled up in his chest before he could stop his eyes from fogging over, but he hid his building tears behind a casual chuckle. "Let's just say that was the most beautiful sound ever."  
  
Now it was Bull fighting back the urge to start sobbing right there in front of his boss. He wanted to gather his lieutenant in a huge bear hug, to tell him that he couldn't stand the thought of watching his men die. That sort of thing, however, was only done behind closed doors - his vulnerability was not for public viewing, especially not by the Inquisitor. Fortunately, his acting skills were still as sharp as ever. " _I'll_ say pulling you guys back made you go all soft on me," he said with a rap of his knuckles against the chest of Krem's leather cuirass. "Think I'll make the drills tougher from here on," he mused before thumping the younger man on the back with the same hand. "You'd better get to training. I won't be cutting any slack tonight."  
  
"Tonight!?" Krem felt his muscles aching at the very idea of drills. "We didn't even have drills tonight!"  
  
Bull grinned. "You do now. Besides, it's not like you've got any big plans..." He couldn't resist pushing Krem's buttons when the opportunity presented itself. "Unless you finally managed to land a date with that cute minstrel from the tavern."  
  
Krem grumbled under his breath. He'd just managed to work up the courage to talk to Maryden, but Bull had made sure he wouldn't get the chance tonight. Even so, he was more than grateful to still be here to take the captain's orders. "I can never catch a break from you, can I?" he asked as he scratched the back of his head.  
  
"Nope," Bull replied, reaching over and delivering an affectionate thump to Krem's leather-clad shoulder. "But that's why The Bull's Chargers can't be beat. Besides," His manner softened as he let his lone eye meet Krem's. "You're my lieutenant. You're the one I really need to be at your best. If something happens to me, the torch passes to you."  
  
Asaaranda had been content to step back and let Bull and Krem work out their own affairs until now, but the idea of losing her comrade in arms was too much to let go unvoiced. "You know, Krem's Chargers doesn't quite have the same ring to it."  
  
Krem shook his head, the edges of a frown curling onto his lips. "Wouldn't change the name. Wouldn't even change the song or the salute." As his eyes met with Bull's, his frown faded and he stood straighter and taller. "We're the Bull's Chargers, through and through. Haven't lost a man yet," he declared proudly, though with wavering eyes. "Some don't get back up when they're cut down, yeah, but they're not _lost._ Chief knows all their names and we make sure they're never forgotten."  
  
Bull fell silent as he shook the vision of his men dying out of his mind. "Yeah, now you're just getting morbid," he said, uneasily clipped. He delivered a hearty pat to Krem's shoulder, enough to nearly send him off balance. "Now get your ass down there and practice those shield moves I taught you. I want 'em burned into your brain by drill time."  
  
"Yeah, yeah, alright," Krem grumbled as he waved his mentor off and walked past the Inquisitor. "Worship," he nodded to her as his steps turned more brisk and finally broke into a full jog.  
  
Asa watched him disappear around the bend of the wall nearby. Once he was out of earshot, she leaned on the watchtower wall and sighed audibly, as if she was bearing the weight of the whole fortress and everyone in it instead of the other way around. " _Shit,_ " she groaned a puff of fog into the air.  
  
"You can say that again, Boss," Bull chuffed, tightly crossing his arms over his chest. "It's been my biggest mood for the past week." His gaze remained pointedly averted from hers.  
  
"I can imagine," Asa replied, playing with a loose piece of brick with her foot. "What happened to you would fuck anyone up." She bent down to pick up the rock and turned it over between her fingers. "Speaking of which, how've you been otherwise?" After bouncing the rock in her hand a few times, she sighted an area between Bull's horns and chucked the stone in that direction, intending it to go over his head.  
  
His lone eye narrowed as a big grey hand swept up to snatch the rock out of the air. "I'll live. I'm tough like that." It wasn't so much a boast as it was a confession, and came with a resigned sigh.  
  
Asa's brows knitted together as her eyes scrutinized his face. "I hope so," she replied, pointedly. "Everyone's got their limits, even you."  
  
The Iron Bull could already tell she wasn't buying his cover. Perhaps some of his Ben-Hassrath was rubbing off on her - or perhaps his own abilities were already slipping without the Qun to guide him. He gave her a sharp glance as he chucked the rock back at her. "Don't worry about _my_ limits, Boss. Worry about yours. You've got enough on your plate as it is, and I don't wanna get in the way."  
  
She flailed her arm out to catch the rock, barely getting a grip on it before it hit the ground. "Bull," she said, wrapping her fingers around the rock and refusing to take her eyes off him. "You're the best man I've got. If you think I'm _not_ gonna worry about you, you can't read me near as well as you think you can." She flung the rock back in his direction.  
  
Passively, he lifted a hand to catch the falling rock after it bounced off his chest. He turned it over in his palm, examining its cracks and bumps. It was smooth on all but the side it had been broken from. Once, this rock was part of a huge, strong fortress that could withstand even the most brutal storms. The brick it had been broken from had been taken raw from some place in the wilderness, and meticulously carved and shaped by the hands of a skilled stonemason into a form that could be put to use. His gaze fell to the hole where the rock used to be. Carefully shifting his weight, he knelt down on his good knee and fitted the piece of brick back into its rightful place, all the while biting back grunts of discomfort and pain. Without a word, he stood up and took a few more steps in the direction they were headed.  
  
Asa moved to follow, but stopped when she realized he might have been wanting to walk away. "Hey," she called after him, "You still want me around?"  
  
Bull answered with a nod and a wordless rumble, purposefully keeping his silence unbroken as he mentally treaded the deepening waters of his thoughts. The tides rose, the tides fell, and the sea was indeed changeless, but now he felt terrifyingly close to drowning. It was safer now to have someone there to hold him back from the undertow. As he stopped to wait for her, he cast his eye to the distant horizon, where he could see the darkening clouds foretelling a coming storm. Fortunately, the storms here weren't nearly as bad as they were off the coast of Par Vollen. Even dreadnoughts could be flooded, or have their hulls torn away by the brutal winds, or worst of all, be set ablaze by lightning.  
  
Asaaranda latched onto her cue to catch up with him. Her brows knitted in curiosity, but she asked nothing further, though she kept closer to him than before as they walked.  
  
Still, he could feel her inquisitive eyes boring through his skull. The longer they went on without speaking, the more the silence chewed at his mind. By now, she would have certainly been waiting for him to speak, but he had yet to form words worth saying out loud. Her own long period of muteness left him at once relieved and unsettled. In the times where she did speak, she was the chattiest mage he had ever met - at least, until Dorian joined the Inquisition.  
  
Even without her words, though, he was grateful for her presence and care. That, at least, gave him something to say. "You know, you'd make a good Tamassran."  
  
Her eyes widened and lips pursed in her trademark curious expression. "What do you mean by that?"  
  
His steps gradually slowed as he turned his head to let his glance bounce off hers. "You care. A lot." _Too much._ That thought burdened his brow. Caring was not enough; too much, even worse. She was savage and callow, unbound and undisciplined, a beast of emotion and sense. She was always quivering, worrying, whining like an imekari in the body of an adult. And here _he_ was, lying to her and coddling her as if she would be anything but Saarebas. Already, the effects of abandoning the Qun were setting in. How much further could he fall?  
  
"Of course I do," Asa retorted, a knot forming between her thin brows. "I have to. Without me..." Her eyes lowered as if to break the connection between their thoughts. "It'd all be over," she said as she resumed eye contact. "That role's been assigned to me, and I can't run from it, or fail. I might as well do it right. I remember you said the Qunari choose their leaders from those who can make the hard decisions and stick with them, no matter what the cost. That..." Her palms opened and turned up at her sides. "Kind of stuck with me."  
  
Now it was his own voice Bull heard in his head, saying those exact words to an Asaaranda who seemed much younger than the one standing before him. It had only been a season since then, yet her face had aged with the lines of years. Her brow hung heavy over green eyes dulled with worry and sleeplessness. The tremors in her hands had grown more frequent and intense - even now, presented before him, they were shaking.  
  
She had voiced her determination to fulfill her role, but she seemed convinced even now that she would have to do so alone. With or without the Qun to guide him, Bull knew at least one truth - this burden was too great for any mortal to bear on their own, even one with a creepy glowing green magical thing on their hand. He suspected that Asaaranda knew this just as well on some deep level. It was true that only she could control the rifts and hold the demons back, and it was true that Corypheus was after her specifically for that reason, but in his own mind, she was only able to hold up the sky because the rest of the Inquisition had raised her to enough of a height to keep it from crashing down on the rest of them. They only held her up as the Herald of Andraste because it was the natural reaction of lost, panicked bas when nothing in the world seemed certain anymore.  
  
"Yeah?" he made a sound of reception, absent of opinion. "You expecting my advice or something?" He let his front shift into one of neutrality, heavy brows flattening over a sharp eye.  
  
Taken aback by the question, Asa's eyes snapped back into focus. "I'm not _expecting_ anything, Bull," she replied, "But I do appreciate your advice. It's been a lot of help." Her shoulderblades spread against the wall of the guard tower. "And, well..." There was that sheepish drawl again - she was searching for the right words and wasn't certain of how well they would come out. "Just having you around has made my life a whole lot easier." Thin, dark-painted lips flicked up around her words.  
  
His glower softened, and he strode over to the wall around the corner from the one she occupied. "At least I know we're both on the right side," he observed, crossing his arms and tilting his head back around the corner so he could see her face. "I'm better suited to commanding smaller units like the Chargers out on the field, nowhere near your war room crew. But I can still tell you what I know, if you want." He watched for her shoulders to slump with her sigh of relief.  
  
On cue, she sighed and the hunch in her back jutted out against the stone. "I'd like to try to figure out _some_ of this shit myself," she said flatly, crossing her arms and knitting her brows.  
  
This was by far the most frustrating habit of hers he knew. It was a double whammy of trying to carry the world on her shoulders and grossly underestimating her own strength as well as the support behind her. "What _you_ have to worry about is kicking Corypheus' ass. Every single person in this Inquisition is carrying _your_ banner, Boss." He pointed at her. "Whatever their reason, they're on your side. Do you ever watch people's faces when we come back to Skyhold?" His voice wavered with homesickness in the spaces between words. He remembered the little signs of joy and relief in the faces and voices of those he had known in Qunandar when he returned from his missions abroad. Now, to them, he was just another enemy.  
  
Asaaranda shook her head, keeping her gaze just out of reach of his. "I don't really pay attention to anyone," she admitted, "I usually just want to get something to eat and crash for the day." Her eyelids had indeed begun to droop.  
  
He chuckled gruffly at her response. "Hah, yeah, I hear ya. But hear me out here," he insisted. "They light up like torches. They stop what they're doing just to get a look at you. And then," he let his eye meet hers as he motioned for her to join him in watching the people on the ground, busily performing their tasks for the day. "They get back to work. These people aren't here just to worship the ground you walk on, they're here to do whatever it takes to make sure we win." Something foreboding shadowed his gaze. "And you've seen what happens if we lose."  
  
The Inquisitor winced as if he had hit her with his fist. "Yeah," she muttered, briefly nodding as she stared out over the courtyard. Even then, the hunch in her shoulders was visible from the side. She let her eyes meet his as much as she could stand before the burning behind her eyeballs set in. "Hey, I'm sorry for dumping all this shit on your head," she confessed. "Maker knows you've got enough of your own problems to deal with. Especially after last week...and that's pretty much my fault too--"  
  
" _Boss._ " His voice echoed on the icy wind as he turned to face her full on, a hand raised in a halting gesture. "No. You did what you thought was right. I don't blame you at all. Abandoning the Qun..." The bile rose in his throat as he heard the words in his own voice. "Let me take that one. You blame yourself too much as it is."  
  
Asa frowned, and another moment passed in silence. The free ends of her hair rose and stood on end, a telltale sign that she was full of mental static. Her hands dropped to her sides in resignation, and she turned her back to him to watch the distant dance of lightning in the clouds.  
  
He drew in a deep breath of the ozone-laden air tinged with traces of Asaaranda's nervous, exhausted sweat. When long enough passed without a word, he stepped over to her side. "Hey, what I'm trying to say is you're not doing all this alone. All things considered, you're doing a damn good job with what you've got to work with and what you're up against. And--Hey, look at me," he directed as he saw her gaze begin to drop again.  
  
She turned her eyes toward him, barely moving her head and keeping her body rooted to the spot. Her shoulders, however, had softened their square.  
  
He leaned forward just enough to level his eye with hers. "The Iron Bull is with you all the way." He kept his voice soft, low, and reassuring until he saw her stance relax and the knot leave her brow. "And we are going to kick _so_ much ass." As he said these next words, his grey lips spread to reveal a huge grin and a glint sparkled in his eye. A rumble of delight rolled up from the back of his throat, and he broke their close stance. "Now..." he said as he stood to full height, fist triumphantly clenched.  
  
**"Let's go get drinks!"**


End file.
